


Three Ways Tom Swale and Carl Romeo Never Met

by astrophelstella



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrophelstella/pseuds/astrophelstella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carl's legs were stretched across the narrow corridor, so he wasn't surprised to hear the polite cough. He looked up from the book on his lap, which subtly shivered into a distressed leather binding, "Sefer Yetzirah" embossed in large gilt letters on the front.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Ways Tom Swale and Carl Romeo Never Met

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talk_back](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=talk_back).



> Thanks to talk_back for the prompt and to the amazing youngwizards.com for references.

**ONE.**

Carl's legs were stretched across the narrow corridor, so he wasn't surprised to hear the polite cough. He looked up from the book on his lap, which subtly shivered into a distressed leather binding, "Sefer Yetzirah" embossed in large gilt letters on the front. 

"Blocking your way?" 

The man's smile was crooked and bright. 

"I'm wondering what to read into finding you in this hallway twice in as many days. Am I following you?" 

"I'm waiting for a friend in the classroom."

"And I'm waiting for the rabbi- quite the pair of Becketts. We could dare to knock."

"Go ahead," said Carl, bemused.

The man rapped twice on the classroom door. The voices inside barely paused, their conversation growing louder. Carl pulled himself up, but he wobbled and almost fell into the man, whose backpack was bulging with iron tools and what looked like divining rods.

"Careful," he said, his brown eyes warm. "We haven't even been introduced."

"I'm Carl." 

"A nice Jewish name. I'm Tom Swale," said the man.

Carl had wondered about Tom yesterday, when he'd seen the man balancing two cake mixes on top of a large stack of books in the downstairs lobby. He was about to ask what Tom was waiting to ask, hoping to subtly find out whether he knew that the rabbi was a planetary advisor on compression gematria for syllabic acronyms and general aschesis when he heard the voices coming nearer to the door. 

"-at least, that's what I heard from Hrau'f the Silent."

"Ah, the daughter of the Voice, she who speaks in whispers. We call her bat qol." 

"The question of why the Powers manifest in such an indirect way has such interesting resonance for our fundamental spell design. Recursion seems to be the default mode of the universe- a certain self referential, fundamental interdependence of persons."

"Rabbi Akiva has far more to say about that than I can summarize before my meeting with the young man currently standing outside of my door. Don't let me forget the subject tomorrow."

The Speech was audible, and Carl looked anxiously at Tom. Maybe he would assume that he was hearing English; most humans did. 

"Well met on errantry, Carl?" said Tom, the crooked smile broadening.

The door opened on an elderly rabbi and a sleek grey cat.

Carl only had time for a surprised look at Tom before the cat turned up his face. 

"Dai, Har'lh. If you're here to bother me about the philosophy of gate-time again, I'll trade you four hours for one of your koi."

"Three hours for a goldfish? I have class at 1:30."

"Done."

"Columbia?" asked Tom.

"NYU, actually."

"Look me up in your manual- we'll have to meet somewhere midtown."

**TWO.**

Another day, another tiny dirty dive bar. If the dream hadn't been so clear, Tom wouldn't be here at all. But he was sure that the Powers were trying to tell him something, and he didn't want to miss it. Or her, the androgyn on Ordeal who would be stumbling through one of these bars after a transport gone wrong, ready for some solid advice on helping her people across the Eclestic line. As usual, the Powers had only told him two of the crucial "who, what, when, where." The keys to the non-human monitoring spells he'd put in the other three bars jiggled at a high pitch out of the corner of his eye. 

The disco beat was pounding, and the masses writhing on the floor seemed dreary, as tired of the scene as Tom was. He muttered a few syllables and the air around his ears obligingly shielded most of the bass and treble, leaving the bands of normal human speech free just as the bartender, a tall man with dark hair, leaned across the bar. 

"So, Tom, right? What do you do?"

"I'm writing a novel," Tom shouted into his ear. The man looked interested, so he continued. 

"Small town boys meet the big city, worm holes, talking fish- I'm trying to write about how we find our place in the universe."

"I like fish," said the man. "I'm Carl. You'll have to come back some time and tell me how it's going, let me know when you get an agent, that sort of thing."

At the end of the long bar, two waiters were carrying on an urgent conversation. Tom extended the spell.

"- on the floor in the women's bathroom but I'm not sure she's a girl, which is fine with me but the guys are complaining and she keeps asking for the "advisory," and I can't bring her to Larry because I'm sure he's drunk already-"

Tom slipped off his stool and headed for the bathroom, with an apologetic glance at Carl. He thought Carl looked curious, or maybe a bit hopeful, but it was hard to tell under the flashing lights.

The probationer wasn't lying on the floor as he had feared. Instead, she had staked out the furthest corner and was typing furiously on what looked like a bulbous iPhone. Only because Tom was looking could he see her sixth extensible finger. He crouched down beside her. 

"Dai stiho." He said softly. "Let's get out of here and find something you can eat. This planet is sevarfrith, and you're making these people nervous." She glanced at him, assessing.

"Are you the planetary advisory?"

"No, but I've seen worlds like yours before. Want to talk about the lava, or the Lone Power?" 

There was a pause. "We call her the Firebringer," she said. Tom extended his bubble of quiet to her as the door swung open and the noise billowed. As they passed by the bar, he slid a ten across to Carl.

"I'll let you know when the novel gets published."

**THREE.**

4:27 A.M. Tom stumbled out of the gate, one leg of his pants covered in a shimmering green slime.

"Another rough one?" 

The cat walked out of the shadows and jumped up onto the ledge, curling around Tom's clean leg in greeting before reaching out to the gate, glowing strings curling around her paws. 

"I like to call it valuable training and work experience. If the Powers have assigned me to an infinite unpaid internship, why can't I put it on my resume?"

"My ehhif's doing everything he can to get out of his office, and you're trying to get in? Just tell stories, T'hom. It's what you're good at."

"But just imagine the letters of reccomendation, Sauuresh. 

'The applicant shows strong problem solving skills in dealing with unpredictable circumstances, such as finding a rogue wizard in the middle of the Crossings about to blow the Lilene ceiling to little bits of radioactive carbon. His team oriented approach has helped a twenty three foot Tr'ent who had been trapped on a planet hundreds of light years from his home world for four years without his silicon based Manual and couldn't make the entastics work to get home. He showed a desire to be challenged by waking up this morning.' It almost makes me want to reapply to Goldman."

"You haven't explained the slime, and I'm not going to ask."

"Probably better that way. Dai stiho, Sauuresh. Thanks for holding it open for me."

"Dai. I'd better not see you until Monday."

9:50 AM, Sunday Sauuresh was nowhere to be seen, and the scheduled gate activation had come and gone twenty minutes ago. Tom whispered the last syllables of his search spell again. He expected the ringing silence of another empty parameter set, so when the spell bounced back almost immediately to show the cat across the room he winced visibly. 

"Boundary protected binary search trees- almost as easy as keeping the Grand Central gates running." 

"At least I didn't wake you up this time. What happened to my gate?"

"If it were your gate, it wouldn't ever be working."

The cat paused, concentrating on the boundaries she was resetting, then turned away and began grooming.

"There- it was just some fraying in the temporal substring. Heading back to Mkarat?" 

"All the exciting research on aschesis is there, and it's easier for me to visit them than for the entire team to deal with the pressure here."

"Not to mention the noise. You should be all set. Get through before my other problem wizard comes at 9."

"I thought I was special."

As Tom stepped through the gate, he saw a tall man in a fraying black coat running towards their dusty corner, coffee in one hand and Manual in the other. He waved, and the man smiled.

6:35 AM, Wednesday. When Tom woke up, two of the gate team cats were looking down at him somberly. 

"79 working days without an accident. It was a miracle."

"We should have started a union."

"Or a religion."

Tom blinked. "You're trying to convince me that I passed out coming through the gate, but I know I fell asleep last night in my bed, and I'm still there. How did you get into my apartment?"

"No, T'hom. We're trying to convince you that you weren't the only thing that came through the gate last night. What do you know about the three wheeled, apparently non-wizarding lifeform that we had to put in stasis after it almost ran over two commuters? We think it was trying to catch the 7 to Flushing."

"Shit. The wheelbarrow came through?"

When they got to the gate, the wheelbarrow was out of stasis and rocking back and forth slowly on the orange peels and grime of its corner. The tall man was talking softly but urgently to it, his Brooklyn accent punctuated by choppy hand gestures. As they carefully edged closer, he leaned back and smiled.

"He's fine now. He just couldn't figure out how to get back home, and so he thought he'd follow what looked like other sentient life forms, and then he panicked when he saw the trains."

"Thanks, Carl. We can put him through the gate to wherever he needs to go, but your trip will be delayed until the next semi-quaver in the strings. You could get some coffee with Tom while you wait." Sauuresh had a calculating look in her eyes, and Uriow and Sarhah smiled behind her back. 

"I always heard frequent fliers get the good pretzels," said Carl.


End file.
